Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Second and third days teaching at Kyunghee Elementary

April 22, 2014
So there have been a few speed bumps in the road this week.   I was told to go to the administrative office in the mornings to get the keys to the art room so that I could unlock the door and let myself in.  I got the keys, but I could not figure out how to disable the alarm system (the buttons were in Korean).  As I was struggling, a Korean English teacher happened to be walking by as I was struggling and offered to help.  She could not figure the system out either, so she opted to open the door even though the alarm was not disabled.  The alarm went off, but we eventually figured out how to turn it off.  I thought everything was fine, but a few minutes later, some police looking people showed up in what looked like kevlar vests.  I was so embarrassed.  So that happened, but I guess it wasn't that big of a deal.  Also, I could not get my powerpoint with Korean translations to come up.  I eventually got that worked out as well.  Professor Ahn observed part of my first class (fourth grade), so naturally, that class turned out to be a train wreck.  I think so, anyways.  I was just really shaken up from the things that had happened earlier that morning.  The rest of the day went fine, though.

April 23, 2014
I got into the room today without alerting the Korean National Guard today, so that was really good.  I did, however, give my mentor teacher's computer three computer viruses that were apparently on my jump drive.  Once my jump drive was plugged into the computer, some crazy screen came up saying scary things like "press F8", "physical memory dump", and "crash".  Awesome.  She got it all worked out through a phone call, but it scared me and made me feel awful.  We are trying to get materials ready and plan for a ceramics lesson next week...but the language barrier is making things really complicated.  Google translate is not really helping... I guess that English and Korean are so different, it is hard to translate things literally and still retain the original meaning.
I had two classes today... one group of sixth graders, and one group of fourth.  I think they went fine... now that Professor Ahn added Korean translations into my powerpoint.  This allows me to teach in English, and then Mrs. Lee reiterates in Korean.  This method obviously seems to be working a lot better than me just trudging through in only English.
After my classes, I observed Ms. Choe and Ms. Ahn (English teachers) facilitating an English listening midterm to their Earth level (the lowest english level) students.  It was really interesting.  All of the students so far seem to like me, and are excited to see a foreign stranger in their school.

Side note:
students at this school are grouped by their English proficiency.  The levels are:
Earth- the lowest level
Wind- second lowest level
Water- second highest level (my host brother is at this level)
Fire- the highest English proficiency

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